The Planets Bend Between Us
by jandl
Summary: Olivia Dunham is trapped and it will take the mind of a certain Human/Time Lord Biological Meta-crisis and his human companion to save her and get her home. Spoilers through 2x22 "Over There Part II" for Fringe and 4x13 "Journey's End" for Doctor Who.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Fringe belongs to Bad Robot and Fox. TenII and Rose and their assorted memories belong to Russell T. Davies and the Beeb. All I own is the dorkish mind that thought this fic up.

**A/N**: The second I saw that the other universe had zeppelins, I knew a Tenth Doctor era crossover had to be done. The second Olivia got stuck Over There, I knew the Doctor and Rose would have to meet her. Add in the fact that I'm certain the writers are closet RTD era Whovians (due to the explanations they write about things in physics), and well...here we are. Knowledge of both series is helpful, but not necessary to understand what's going on, as I tend to rehash events in conversation to keep people up to speed on both fandoms.

**Spoilers**: Up through 4x13 "Journey's End" on New Doctor Who (with some small references to Classic!Who era Doctors and companions). Up through 2x22 "Over There Part II" for Fringe.

Let me know what you think

**The Planets Bend Between Us**

When Rose Tyler awoke, she discovered three things. First, she noticed that she was in complete darkness. Second, she noted that she had a pounding headache, which was understandable given the knot she was sporting at the base of her skull from the butt of someone's rifle. Last, and most distressingly, she noted that the Doctor was nowhere to be found, as evidenced by the silence in which she found herself. If the Doctor was with her, he would either be cuddling with her in the dark, nursing her head like an overindulgent mother hen, or (and this was equally likely) pacing the room in the dark, feeling the walls and alternating between yelling at possible video cameras and muttering quietly while dropping key phrases such as "Defender of the Earth" (which always made Rose bristle as that was HER title in this universe) and "Destroyer of Worlds."

Rose panicked for the briefest of seconds. If the Doctor wasn't with her, he could be anywhere. For all Rose knew, she could be on a spaceship, halfway to the Kenula system on the other side of the constellation Lyra. Or she could have hit a rift in time and have been accidentally buried alive in 1558. It wasn't as though it would be the first time for either scenario. When one worked for Torchwood or was friends with the Doctor, (and she had the honour of doing both on a daily basis), one often found themselves in what would be considered laughable, B-movie sci-fi situations by most people. Rose took a deep breath and calmed herself down. Wherever she was, rather it was a coffin or the dark depths of space, the Doctor would find her, or she would find him. Universes hadn't been able to keep them separate for long, and a few feet of dirt or thousands of miles of endless vacuum wouldn't do so either.

Once Rose's initial panic had subsided, she laid down in the dark and laid out her hands and feet as wide as she could go. All she felt was the cold floor on her back. She rolled slightly to her right side and once again felt no walls hindering her movement. She encountered the same when she rolled to her left. When she established there was plenty of leg-room and arm-room, she stuck her hands up and once again felt nothing. Wherever she was, she could sit up and was guaranteed a few feet of space at least. This comforted her greatly. Wherever else she may be, she wasn't buried alive. (That was one experience Rose Tyler did *not* want to go through again, in any universe). Once she had sat herself up, she braced her hands behind her and started scooting backwards, trying to find a wall to brace against and possibly get some idea of the amount of space the room offered. After about five repeated motions of moving her hands back and pushing with her feet to repel her body back wards, she settled with a sigh and grunt against what she discovered to be a padded wall.

"You could just sit on the bench with me," came a hoarse whisper of a voice to her right.

Rose nearly jumped out of her skin. She had been so preoccupied with finding out the size of the room that she had given no thought to anyone else being in the room with her.

"I won't hurt you," the voice said again. "I saw you when they threw you in here. You're in a white outfit, just like me. They hit you in the head hard enough to draw blood, and you had bruises on your fists, so you fought back. Therefore, you're not one of them. So, don't worry. I won't hurt you," the voice said, getting stronger and more determined as it went on, ending the last sentence with deliberate emphasis on each word.

"To my right you said, yeah?" Rose asked, touching the bruised portion of her head and finding a crusty area on her scalp, proving what the unknown voice had said. They must have really hit her hard. Rose inwardly cursed the Doctor for a brief moment. If he hadn't been rambling on at a thousand miles an hour about some scientific hullabaloo the last time she had seen him (hullabaloo of which she told him on their first trip she had failed at understanding) she may have heard the guard shuffling up behind her. As it was, she had been too distracted trying to run and think about the import of what he had been saying and trying to suss out what it all meant instead of paying attention to where she was running.

"Yeah," the voice (which Rose could finally identify was female in gender) answered in reply. "Just follow my voice and go slow about two feet forward and one to the right."

"How can you tell in this place?" Rose asked, standing slowly and taking two steps forward before turning very deliberately to the right and walking forward, feeling for the bench with her hands.

"Well, I've been here a while. I know every inch of this cell," came the voice, this time from directly in front of her. She felt a brief touch of smooth fingers against the back of her right hand before the hand fully grabbed hers and lightly pulled Rose forward. Rose reached down and felt the briefest touch of scratchy fabric over muscled thigh before muttering a brief "Sorry," and removing her fingers to the bench. After feeling around and concluding that the bench would be big enough for her to sit on while maintaining a comfortable distance from the unseen stranger, Rose sat down, resting her head against the padded wall again.

"So, what are you in for?" Rose asked, putting on her best fake New York accent. That is to say, a really bad one.

"I stole back the Secretary of Defense's son, and foiled his plans for universal genocide." If it were not for the situations Rose often found herself in, she would have thought the woman was being glib.

"Yeah, megalomaniacs hate it when that happens. We knew the Secretary was up to something, but we just didn't know what. Well, I can add that to my ever-growing list of things I need to get done today."

"You said 'we,' which means you work for some sort of intelligence organization. Which one? You're British, so...MI-5? Interpol? What?"

"None of the above. Torchwood London at your service," Rose said.

"Torchwood? I've never heard of it. What's that? Black ops?"

"You've never heard of Torchwood? That's impossible! We're all over the news! Stars going out, Dalek invasion, Dr. Lumic's Cybermen...we took care of all that."

The woman's silence was all the evidence Rose Tyler needed that whomever she was speaking to was not from around here, and by "here" she meant the universe in which they were both sitting.

"You're not from this universe, are you?" Rose asked, a tone in her voice that made it clear she was more making a statement than asking a question.

"It's that obvious, is it?" the voice asked, a small, sardonic smile in her voice.

"Well, you just don't sound like the kind of woman who wouldn't be aware of world-changing events. So, you guessed I worked for some kind of intelligence. Which branch do you work for?"

"FBI. Fringe Division. Well, my world's anyway."

"So, do you have the tattoo the federal agents have to have in this universe's intelligence forces? I mean, the British agencies don't require it, but due to the sheer amount of unexplained rift activity in the States, the agents have to get them here. By order of the Secretary," Rose added, putting her hand over her heart in mock allegiance before remembering that the woman couldn't see her.

"No, we don't have tattoos. Just badges."

"Oh, so still the way I remember seeing it on the X-Files then. Tell me, the universe you're from...do they have a Prime Minister or a President in Great Britain?"

"Why so curious?" the voice asked, half suspicious and half amused.

"You're not the only one who isn't from around here." Rose paused a moment to let that knowledge set in the woman's mind before she continued. "But that doesn't necessarily mean we're from the same place either."

"There's a Prime Minister," the voice answered after a short pause. "Had the Twin Towers and the Pentagon been hit on 9/11 in your original universe?"

"Yes," Rose answered, feeling a strange burst of excitement at the thought of meeting someone outside of her family that was from the same world as she. "It looks like we're from the same universe, or at least very similar in the major events. What's your name?"

The voice was silent a few minutes and Rose had no doubts that its owner was deciding whether or not to be honest. When the answer finally came, it came in a halted tone, as though the woman were giving it against her better judgment. "Olivia. Dunham."

"I'm Rose. Rose Tyler." The woman's lack of response to this name gave Rose yet another burst of happiness. Whatever universe she was from, Pete Tyler had not been a successful businessman for she wasn't treating Rose like a celebrity. The odds that Olivia Dunham was from the same universe as she was were improving by the minute.

"So, Rose Tyler...what are *you* in for?" Olivia asked, taking on a much more successful faux-Brooklyn accent than Rose had managed to fake.

"Want the long version or the short version?" Rose asked, swiping a bit of unseen blonde hair behind her ear.

"Usually I'd say short, but we've got plenty of time..."

"Well, it all started when the Doctor noticed unscheduled rift activity here in New York. Given the sheer amount of prior incidents and spreading quarantined areas, the Doctor decided to lead an inquiry."

"Doctor who?" came Olivia's voice, breaking Rose's thoughts and reminding her once again that Olivia knew as little of this universe as Rose had when she first stumbled into it.

"Just 'the Doctor.' He doesn't use a name, and before you ask what he's a doctor of, he's a doctor of everything. Well, except medicine, though he has cured people of random diseases before too. Just picture the smartest man you can think of who at times verges on insane, and then double it, and you have the Doctor."

Rose heard Olivia chuckle in the dark, and though she could not see it, she was certain that Olivia had a smile on her face. Rose was curious as to what Olivia was picturing, but decided she would ask later. She still had quite a ways to go on her answer after all, and the sooner Olivia was caught up in what had gotten Rose locked in this room, the sooner Rose and Olivia could search for a way out.

"Anyway, the Doctor wanted to check out these readings, but no one from the office of the Secretary of Defense would answer his question. So, we took the problem to the top of the intelligence chain..."

* * *

"Absolutely not, Doctor!" her father yelled, his voice reverberating around the large office room. Pete Tyler stood before the observation window, the light from the setting Sun casting an eerie glow about his thinning red hair and making his glower even more pronounced. "I know that the rift activity incites your curiosity, and I share your concerns, but Great Britain's associations with the United States are tenuous at best without me allowing two agents into the facility under the radar simply because the Secretary of Defense can't be arsed to answer your questions."

"Pete, Pete, Pete, Pete. Pete Tyler," said the pinstriped suit clad man to Rose's left, bouncing on the balls of his feet in white plimsolls. Rose watched with arms folded across her chest as the-man-who-was-her-father-but-wasn't rolled his eyes heavenward in fond exasperation and pre-conceded defeat. "Look, I'm not saying Torchwood should get involved. Far from it. I think the situation is bad enough without a bunch of people going in guns blazing," the Doctor wheedled, sticking his hands into his pants pockets, and getting a slight sneer across his face at the mention of guns. Despite working for Torchwood in an advisory capacity, any sort of weapon still caused him to clench his teeth. He loosened his jaw and continued speaking. "Rather, I was suggesting that two scientists from the Department of Defense could, you know, amble around the research facilities."

"Two scientists?" Pete scoffed. "Need I remind you that neither of you do very convincing American accents? Or that Rose is world famous-both as my daughter and as an agent? Doctor, you don't have a plan, and while we may not know exactly what the Secretary of Defense is up to, we do know it's dangerous!"

"Exactly why you should let your best and brightest (and by the first I mean Rose, and by the latter I mean me) investigate. And I *do* have a plan. Sort of. Maybe."

Rose stepped forward away from the Doctor's side and looked her dad straight in the eye, her back straight. Finding out what was going on with the rapidly opening rifts in the United States was important, whether the Secretary was involved with them or not. And as much as she loved her father and her work, she would never trust another agent to a mission this important. She already knew that the Doctor would go to the United States with or without her father's permission, and where the Doctor went, she went. End of story.

"Look, Dad. The universe is still weakened from the Reality Bomb. Two years hasn't been enough time for the wounds in reality to heal. Whether Walter Bishop is involved or not, the rift is unstable and the last thing we need is the stars going out and Daleks and Cybermen finding their way into our world again, or into any of the worlds. Now, you can send the Doctor with me to look after me and have my back, or not. But I'm going with or without Torchwood's resources."

Rose didn't look behind her, but she could feel the smile on the Doctor's face, as well as his pride and adoration. When Rose Tyler had her mind set on something, she was a force to be reckoned with, and while she at times forgot that, she knew the Doctor never did. She could tell from the look on Pete Tyler's face that he was remembering this too.

Pete took a deep breath and released it, putting his hands on his desk and bowing his head for a moment. Rose knew he was praying for the strength to face her mother when he went home.

"Alright, you two. I'll give you the zeppelin tickets you need, as well as some show-mes. But that's all I can do. If you get caught, Torchwood will have to disavow itself of any knowledge. You'll be on your own."

"Understood," Rose said, giving a nod to the Doctor. He nodded with a small smile and gave her a brief glance before leaving the room.

"I don't have to tell you to be careful, do I, Rose?" Pete asked, coming from behind his desk and grabbing his not-quite daughter's hand.

"No, sir. I'll be careful. And if something happens, the Doctor's there to look after me."

The expression on Pete Tyler's face stated quite clearly that he knew the Doctor's questionable track record when it came to looking after his adopted daughter. But he also knew that Rose was quite capable of looking after herself (and the Doctor as well on many occasions), and he allowed himself a small smile and a chuckle. "Just be sure you make it home in one piece. Jackie will kill me if you lose any appendages."

"Don't worry, Dad. I'll make sure that the most you end up with is a slap."

Pete shuddered. "You say that like it's a gift or something. Your mum has one hell of a slap."

Rose laughed. "I know! You should have seen the one she laid on the Doctor the first time she met him! He moaned about it for days!"

"Seriously, Rose. Take care of yourself. And make sure you call your mother," Pete admonished her, pulling her into a tight hug as he gave his final dictate.

"I'll call her as soon as we land. Bye, Dad."

From there, she had gone to meet up with the Doctor in the lobby of the Torchwood building and together they had taken a private zeppelin from London to the Combined States of Portugal, and from there to the United States. The second they had landed in New York, the Doctor had taken out the sonic screwdriver he had made upon his arrival in this new universe and had begun to look for the most recent area of rift activity. That had led them to an abandoned theatre where the Doctor had said he was reading strong evidence of portable rift activity, though it was sporadic and dormant at the time. Given that this had been a dead end, the Doctor proposed that he and Rose sneak into the office of the D.O.D. and see if they could find out if Walter Bishop was involved.

"How are we going to do that without the psychic paper?"

"Well, Rose, we're just going to have to do it the old fashioned way."

"Which is?"

"We fake some identification."

"You mean show-mes," Rose corrected, a smile on her face for she could already predict the Doctor's reaction.

"Blech. I hate that term. Show-mes. It just sounds so...unintelligent. I mean, seriously! It's redundant. If an underage person goes into a pub and orders a drink, a barman saying show me your show-me just sounds pretentious. Now the word 'identification,' that has flare. Even the term i.d. has a certain gumption to it, not to be confused with the term 'id' which means something entirely different..."

It was around this statement that Rose blocked him out and just began nodding her head. When the Doctor, half-human or fully Time Lord, began speaking on completely unrelated topics, it was best just to pretend to listen unless you heard your name come up. Rose had learnt this after less than a day of traveling with him.

As the Doctor walked around town, going on endlessly about random subjects-starting with identification cards and ending with Silurian mating habits-he nonchalantly swiped two identification cards from people he casually bumped into, a male and female respectively. Rose, meanwhile, smiled and chatted with the Doctor in second-hand thrift stores, picking up random objects and fiddling with them while they 'chatted.' At the fifth thrift store they visited, one of these objects just happened to be a child's sticky camera from the mid-90s that she then quietly pocketed while the Doctor confused the store-clerk with his rambling chatter.

"So, what's the plan for tomorrow then?" Rose asked that night as they sat on their bed in the low-key hotel the Doctor had picked. They had taken pictures of each other with the sticky camera and used the instant developing sticky film to cover up the original pictures on the identification cards the Doctor had 'liberated.' Rose was now sporting the name Jennie Wade and the Doctor was holding the name Paul Crand.

"Well, these aren't the sort of identification cards that a D.O.D. agent would actually wear, so we're just going to have to pin these to our shirts and walk fast enough that no one really has time to look at them. And you make sure you keep your head down. I don't want people recognizing you!"

"I know, I know," Rose said, rolling her eyes. The Doctor really was *too* protective of her at times. She was well aware of her celebrity status in this universe, and at times she couldn't help but feel that everyone's constant reminders were an underestimation of her intelligence. "So, we get into the D.O.D. offices at the Statue of Liberty. Then what?"

"Then we...look. Try and find out what the Secretary has been hiding from the rest of the world. And, if need be, we run."

"*That's* your plan?"

"Oi! It's more of a plan than I've usually got!"

Rose couldn't deny the truth of that statement. She merely sighed in response and laid down on the bed, closing her eyes, and laying her hands on her stomach.

"Rose, what are you doing?"

"Sleeping."

"Yes, I can see that. But why?"

"Well, you said we'd probably end up running tomorrow, so I'm working on restoring my energy. You're a scientist and a genius, you should know this."

"Well, yes, but I had thought-"

"You thought what, Doctor?" Rose asked, a sharp tone in her voice and her face hiding a smile. She knew *exactly* what the Doctor had been thinking of doing.

The Doctor said nothing, but she felt him move slightly on the bed, coming down from sitting with his back against the headboard to lying on his side with every inch of his body touching her side. He leaned the top half of his body over her and she opened her eyes to see the Doctor's dark brown eyes staring dead into hers, his brown fringe sticking straight up in the front.

"I was thinking...I hadn't given you a proper goodnight." With that, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to hers. Rose couldn't help but smile. This was by far the happiest part of her day-the minutes right before she went to sleep, when the Doctor was hers and hers alone. She moved her hands from the bedspread to his head and held his head steady so that he couldn't pull back, not that he was giving any indication of wanting to do. She allowed her fingers to move through the hair that she herself had described as "really great" and she fought not to go further than kissing him when he moved his orally fixated tongue into her mouth. The Doctor did many things well. He could talk the hind legs off a donkey, re-work whole electronic circuits in seconds, speak over 5 million languages, and had even saved the world using only a satsuma, but if Rose had to pick one thing the Doctor was exceptional at, it would be kissing. There was something about his lips and tongue that made her forget not only who she was or where she was, but what she was there to do in the first place. This time was no exception and if one were to ask her later how long she had allowed the Doctor to kiss her goodnight, she could not have told you. Clearly, it was long enough for her to thoroughly mess up his already messy hair, and for him to have maneuvered himself completely on top of her. It was also long enough that she had wrapped one leg around his waist and his hand had moved to her thigh to caress it in a possessive grip.

By the time the Doctor pulled back from kissing her, Rose was mewling into his mouth and was more than willing to be tired the next day if it meant she could spend the night shagging him (for due to certain universe-saving events, it had been nearly a week since the last time they had been able to indulge in such activities). "Goodnight, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, rolling out from between her legs and giving her a cheeky smile and wink before rolling to his side and easing into a deep sleep.

Rose huffed in annoyance for a few minutes before trying to poke the Doctor awake so he could finish what he started. He seemed dead set on staying asleep, however. Rose turned to her side facing the opposite direction and forced herself to try to sleep. "Bloody alien," she muttered, yanking the covers up around her exposed shoulder and she gave a small smile of satisfaction when she realized this left the Doctor mostly uncovered to the cold room. He deserved it.

They had been at the Statue of Liberty by ten the next morning. Surprisingly, the first part of the Doctor's lack-of-plan had gone well. Rose had kept her head down (though uncovered by a hood as she figured that would look way too suspicious), and she and the Doctor had simply walked fast and acted as if they knew where they were going. Whenever they reached a security checkpoint, the Doctor would simply turn on his charm and, as they walked through, he would be chatting up whomever was standing guard so that the guard wouldn't pay any attention to the very incorrect forms of identification they were wearing. Rose couldn't help but think-not for the first time-that the Doctor was little more than a time-traveling, space-hopping con-artist. She knew better than to mention that assessment to the Doctor, for she knew he would take it as a comparison to their con-artist friend Jack Harkness, which he would take either as a compliment or an insult (depending on what day it was).

Upon entering the main part of the building, they began to search the rooms for any sign of a universe hopping device or anything that could potentially slither between realities. It wasn't until they reached room 47 that they discovered it. The Doctor had used the sonic screwdriver to blow the heavy security locks (muttering the whole time that if it wasn't dead-lock sealed then Walter Bishop clearly wasn't as much of a genius as he had led the world to believe), and they had run in, shutting the door behind them. Rose had not yet even turned around when she heard the Doctor give an impressed whistle, followed by the sound of him unfolding what she had heard him call his 'brainy specs.'

The Doctor was ogling what appeared to be a large, black platform with what appeared to be two metal table legs sticking up on it with hand straps attached to the top. From the ceiling were hung two large black half crescents, though slightly blockish in form. Based on the tracks surrounding them on the ceiling, Rose concluded that these crescents probably spun around in a circle around whatever object happened to be strapped to those two table legs she observed.

"Is it a power source of some sort?" Rose asked, hazarding a guess.

"Yes, in the most simplest of terms, though I'm afraid it's much more complicated than it is simple. It is a power source, but it can't charge anything," the Doctor explained, checking out the control system ten feet away from the machine itself. He was running the screwdriver over the controls, making a concerned face at the beeping signals it was giving off and running a distressed hand through his hair, making it stick out in all directions. "It's like a great big battery, but this control system isn't saying where any of the energy is supposed to go."

"What's it draw energy from? And why? I mean, this universe is already so much more advanced than the one we came from, so what kind of energy do they need?"

"That's a good question. I would say, based on the distance between those two place holders and the size of the hand placements, that we're dealing with a human power source."

"You mean, they're going to drain a person?"

"Yes, and based on the designs for these controls, that power source will only work with a specific type of DNA. But I don't know whose it is. It's not in the system."

"But, what would they use it for?"

"I'm not sure," the Doctor responded, but Rose could tell from the look in his eyes that the Doctor had a pretty good idea. He just wasn't keen on sharing it...yet. Which meant that either the news would make her upset, it was another "end of the universe" moment, it was something the Doctor couldn't stop, or (and this was most likely) it was all three.

"So what do we do?"

"Well, I'm not sure the purpose of that machine, but whomever it's meant for...that machine will kill them. And there's enough energy in a person's life to rip the universe apart. So, we find out whose DNA that is, and we keep them from getting on that machine."

"How do we do that?"

"Why, Rose Tyler, I'm shocked you even have to ask such a question! We snoop around of course! Something that important, there's got to be documented evidence somewhere."

"*You* wouldn't write it down," Rose reminded him.

"Well, yes, but no one else is as smart as me, are they?" the Doctor reminded her, sticking his sonic screwdriver back in his pocket and placing his hand on the small of her back to usher her towards the door. Rose merely raised her eyebrows and shook her head in fondness.

The second the door closed behind them, an alarm sounded. The Doctor had, once again, forgot to sonic the inside alarm before they left. Rose glared at him while the Doctor conjured up what was trying (and failing) to be an innocent smile. "Oops," he muttered. "Run!"

Rose took off running to the left while the Doctor took off to the right. This was a strategy they had worked out long ago, back when she had traveled with him in a blue police box through time and space, and he had sported blue eyes, close-cropped hair, and a Manchester accent. If alarm bells went off, they were to go separate ways for if one got caught, the other was more likely to be able to hide and come rescue the other. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Rose really hoped it would work this time for she did not like what little she knew of Walter Bishop. She had spoken to the man twice at some Vitex parties and he was like any other politician who had suffered a personal tragedy-ready to milk the tragedy for all it was worth and full of vengeance. Those qualities were fine if you were an everyday person, but they were dangerous if you were a person in power and Rose had automatically been leery of him; the Doctor was even more so.

Rose ran down hallway after hallway until she almost couldn't tell where she was (hindered slightly by the fact that all the hallways were very much the same). She had reached a dead end and was catching her breath when she felt the barrel of a gun pressing against the back of her neck. She immediately put her hands up in surrender.

"On your knees," a voice commanded. Rose, despite her independent nature, found herself following the order. After all, she had promised Pete and the Doctor that she would take care of herself and if she had any hope of getting out the D.O.D. she had to first survive long enough to do so. That didn't mean she would go down without a fight. Her Torchwood training came to the fore and she quickly reached behind her and knocked the gun barrel away from her and quickly kneed the guy in the stomach, followed by a punch to his face. However, she had failed to pay attention to her surroundings and didn't notice the other guard coming to his friend's aid. The last thing Rose had been aware of was a sharp pain in the back of her skull that caused her to bite her tongue, and then she had seen nothing but darkness.

* * *

"...and then I woke up here," Rose finished.

"Wow. That is quite a story. So, both you and the Doctor are from an alternate universe too, huh?"

"Yeah."

"And the Doctor is an alien."

"Yeah."

"So, how did you get here?"

"That's a long story. How about I tell you when we get out of here?"

"That's *if* we get out of here," Olivia replied, her voice taking on a defeated, tired sound.

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. It always looks the same. What month is it?"

"September."

Olivia was quiet for a few moments, but Rose heard her take in a ragged breath. Rose could tell from Olivia's voice that Olivia was not a person who would cry or complain, but she could also tell from the sigh she gave that if Olivia had been the crying type, she would have started now.

"Four months. I've been here for four months." Olivia sounded almost surprised.

"Well, we'll get out soon. You now have something you didn't have. A new pair of hands to scan the walls with, and we have the Doctor. If we can't find a way out, then he'll find us."

"You have a lot of faith in him," Olivia stated, not as though she was skeptical, but merely stating fact.

"Of course I do. When I first got trapped in this universe, he was still in the other one. It took me three years, but I found my way back. And we had both changed since the last time we had seen each other, but he was still my best friend, and he stayed with me in this universe-slightly different than he had been before, but still my Doctor. Still someone who loved me, and still intent on saving my ass whether I wanted him to or not. Why wouldn't I trust that? Trust me, he'll find us, and he'll figure out a way to get you home."

"Well, I hope so," was all Olivia said and Rose felt Olivia's arm brush against hers as Olivia drew her legs onto the bench and wrapped her arms around them, resting her head against her knees.

"So, how did you steal the Secretary's son? Didn't he disappear like 27 years ago?"

"Yeah, he ended up in my universe. Dr. Walter Bishop's son died at 7 years old in my reality. Walter couldn't handle seeing it happen to another Walter, couldn't stand the look of pain that would inevitably be on an Alter-Elizabeth's face, so he decided to cure the son of his alternate self. But, the vial holding the antidote broke on the trip between realities and he had to steal his alternate self's son. He was originally going to return him, but he just couldn't."

"I can understand that. I came to this world once before I got stuck here. I told the Doctor that I just wanted to *see* my dad because he had died when I was a baby. But once I saw him, I had to talk to him, and then I had to tell him who I was. But he had never had a daughter here and us being related was inconceivable to him. It wasn't until I got stuck here for good that he even saw me as an adopted relative, much less a blood relative. But he wouldn't trade me for anything now, and I could never give him up. We love who we love, and not even reason can stop it."

"Well, Walter kept this a secret from Peter, his son. But, Peter is almost as much of a genius as his father is, and he worked it out eventually. He was SO angry. He ran away in the middle of the night, didn't tell any of us where he was going. The Secretary crossed over and found him on our side and Peter came back here with him. That would have been fine, but the Walter from our reality and I-we discovered something. That machine you were talking about? Peter is the one with the DNA that runs it. We saw drawings that some acquaintances of ours had made that showed what it would do not only to the world, but to Peter. So, we rallied up some friends with certain talents, and three of them plus Walter and I came over to this side to find him and warn him. I actually managed to find him and talk him into coming back with us, but there was an explosion outside the building, and I was knocked out and woke up here."

"And Peter?"

"I have no idea. Based on how long it's been, he's either dead," Rose heard Olivia's voice break slightly at the thought, "or he crossed back over without me."

"Do you really think he would do that?"

Olivia was silent a moment before answering very quietly, "No. But I can't bear the thought that he might be dead."

"He's your best friend, isn't he?" Rose asked knowingly. She did not know Olivia's face or mannerisms, but she knew voices and she understood relationships. And if Olivia had been willing to travel across dimensions simply to leave her friend a warning, then she must love him dearly as a friend, if not more. And, she also noted to herself, despite the heavy truth that he was from an alternate dimension, Peter had been willing to come back to the universe that had lied to him for the majority of his life after a mere conversation with Olivia. Rose couldn't help but wonder what that conversation had consisted of, but she knew better than to ask.

"Yes, he is," Olivia answered, the strength returning to it, and with an air of awe about her tone, as though she had never quite noted this fact out loud before.

"Then I say we find a way out of this cell, get the Doctor, and we find out what the bloody hell happened to Peter Bishop. Are you with me?" Rose turned her head to the left, facing where she knew Olivia was sitting in the darkness.

She heard the rustling of clothing as Olivia turned to her direction in the darkness and she knew that if she could see Olivia, Olivia's eyes would have been staring right into hers with a fiery strength.

"Yes. Let's do this."

"Allon-sy," Rose muttered quietly and she took a deep breath as she and Olivia climbed to their feet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: See previous chapter.

**A/N:** Thanks so much for the response, you guys! I hope you like the second part. Only one more chapter after this!

**Chapter 2**

Olivia Dunham was not quite sure what it was that Rose Tyler expected to find as they set about in a futile inspection of the walls. As Olivia had stated before, she had been there a long time (_four months_, a defeated portion of her mind lamented), and she had scoured and pounded at the walls until her knuckles and palms were raw and bleeding. But, maybe Rose Tyler would know a trick that she herself didn't, she reasoned, so she quietly set about assisting. It was no use. All Olivia could feel beneath her hands were the now familiar crescents between blocks of sturdy foam that were a blinding white in shade when the lights were on (which was only twice a day). She got to the sturdy metal feel of the lone entrance to the room and felt beneath her hand where the slat for the viewing window in the door would be. It was much smaller than the viewing window that the Secretary used to look in on her every night before he left the Statue of Liberty, but it held something more for Olivia. Occasionally, a guard would open that tiny viewing window and she could see beyond it to the window that showed the outside world. Granted, all that she could really see was ocean, but it served to remind Olivia that there was something beyond the mere hallways and interrogation chambers of which she was becoming all too accustomed.

Olivia turned quickly when she heard a weird thunk. She would have described it as dull if it weren't so loud.

"What's this?" she head Rose Tyler ask.

"It's the observation window. There's a chord of thick metal blinds on the other side. Once a day, those blinds open, but they always quickly close again. The window is triple-thick reinforced bulletproof glass. When the blinds close, it becomes soundproof as well."

"Why do they open the window?" Rose asked gently, as though she knew that despite the apparently innocuous question, it was in truth a very personal inquiry.

"To remind me just how powerless I really am here, I suppose."

Rose made no comment to this, seeming to know without asking that it was a subject Olivia would feel uncomfortable broaching with a person she had known for a mere hour. Olivia could not help but feel that Rose was very familiar with having to decide which subjects to push and which ones to let slide. Olivia smiled slightly. Rose and Peter would get along well. Her smile dropped quickly however, when she thought of why it was that the Secretary opened those blinds once a day.

The first time he had done it, she had banged on the glass, crying and begging in a way that she would never have done previously. But she and Peter and Walter had been _so close_ to getting home safely, and before getting knocked out, her mind had already been set on finding the nearest bar and decompressing with Peter over a few shots before she went home to Rachel and hugged her and Ella as hard as she possibly could without inciting their worry. But instead, she had woken up in the godawful cell that she was beginning to think of as home, to see a face that looked like Walter's staring at her in absolute hatred. Despite the obvious difference, her exhausted mind had merely thought "Walter Bishop" and had hoped (despite having no evidence to do so) that if she simply begged and allowed her emotion to shine through, that he would open the door and let her out. For the briefest of moments, he had not been the Secretary of Defense, or even Walternate, he had simply been Dr. Walter Bishop-the father of her best friend and a man who, in her universe, cared about her to a degree that could be potentially dangerous.

But time had worn on, and she had stopped begging for the Secretary to let her out, and she stopped hoping that Peter or her universe's version of Walter would miraculously turn up to save her. Part of her was convinced that the Secretary had won, and Peter and Walter were dead, and so she quietly accepted what she knew would be a lifelong punishment. But, while the Secretary may have won the battle, he would never win the war. She had vowed on her second day in confinement that he would never break her, neither by torture nor neglect. During the succeeding "interrogations," she never answered any questions of importance, and only in intense circumstances did she ever scream. Sadly, these shows of strength left little for her to brag about. She came away from the interrogations with dark bruises and cuts and burns, but very little gained pride. In a way, the Secretary had still won. For while she was not dead, she was by no means alive either. Now when the Secretary opened the blinds, they merely shared a short staring game of which she was always the winner, but of which she never gained a prize.

Olivia had never been an optimistic person. She preferred to deal in facts and hoped that the facts would deal her way. Optimism was more Astrid and Peter's way of seeing things, and she had always stood in wonder of their ability to see the bright side (and she was rather envious, despite the skeptic looks she often gave them in response). But, despite the dire situation and her previous lack of luck, she felt the now unfamiliar feelings of hope spring forth in her chest. While she was no stranger to the feeling-even pessimists and realists cannot squash the feeling entirely-it had been a long time since she had felt them, and she sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes, savouring the sensation. If Rose's claims were to be believed (and for reasons Olivia would never be able to explain, she _did_ believe them) then she may be home with her friends and family before too much longer, and Olivia's skin practically hummed in excitement.

She knew little to nothing of this 'Doctor' Rose was best friends with, but if a woman with Rose's fighting spirit could stand in such awe of him, then he must have a trick or two up his sleeve. Plus, he was an alien and probably had quite a few gadgets that Olivia couldn't fathom. (Possibly even some that Walter and Peter had not thought of; Olivia's mind gave a weird hiccough at trying to conjure that image). Yes, Olivia felt hopeful with Rose Tyler and this yet unseen Doctor at her side, and she felt that maybe-just this once-optimism wasn't _entirely_ outside the realm of reason.

Upon convincing herself (somewhat dejectedly) that she had indeed scoured this wall as well as she could in the previous four months, Olivia felt her way back towards the bench. Before she could reach it, however, she heard a distinct buzzing sound. Before she could ask Rose if she heard it too, she heard a lock click and the door at the side of the cell opened, letting in with it a bright ray of light that made Olivia quickly close her eyes and put her hands over her face. Unlike prior times, she did not rush out at the man opening the door, and she did not fear any sudden shocks from a cattle prod. Without even having to look at him to see him (for her eyes were still unadjusted), she could tell that the man's silhouette standing in the doorway was none other than the Doctor of which Rose had spoken so highly.

By the time Olivia's eyes had adjusted and she could look around without blinking every half a second, Rose had launched herself into the man's arms. The two of them were laughing as though the whole thing was just one large, exciting adventure (and Olivia reminded herself that, to them, it was), and the Doctor was smiling wide, his teeth on display as he buried his face in the space between Rose's shoulder and neck. He squeezed Rose so hard that she squeaked and her feet were raised from the ground, kicking slightly behind her. Olivia just stood awkwardly behind them, taking in the picture of the two of them together. The Doctor, as previously described to her by Rose, was wearing his white plimsoll shoes and his brown pinstriped suit that showed just how thin he was, his hair a mess atop his head and a sonic screwdriver with blue light shining held tightly in his fist. When he released Rose, Rose turned around and Olivia took in her cell mate's face for the first time. Rose was a few years younger than Olivia, with dark brown eyes under obviously dyed blonde hair. She was of medium height and had a smile as equally wide as the Doctor's, though Rose's tongue seemed to slip out between her teeth in a cheeky manner, which the Doctor's did not.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor asked Rose quietly, his hand still resting lightly on the elbow nearest to him, and his head tilted down slightly. Olivia was struck with how familiar the situation seemed-if one just replaced the Doctor's face with Peter's-and once again felt the longing to be home. Olivia was not one for breaking down often, if ever, but she suddenly ached to be around the few people with whom she felt comfortable enough to let her guard down in even the slightest sense. For the first time in weeks, she thought of Peter and Rachel and actually allowed herself to miss them, hoping that the belief that she would see them soon would not prove to unfounded. She shoved her emotions away again and set herself back on mission. Her sentimentality for home could come later, when she had proof that there was even a home to which she could return.

"Olivia," she heard Rose's voice say, and realized that she had spaced completely, blocking out the Doctor and Rose's greetings. She looked up at them both and tried not to acknowledge their facial expressions to her appearance. She knew she must look a fright. After months of intense interrogations and sensory deprivation, she knew her skin would have taken on a pallid colour, the bruises showing up even darker than they would on a normal person. Her hair hung limply around her face, half its dyed red colour and half its natural blonde. Olivia found herself thankful that the guards at least allowed her to bathe a few times a week, for while full of split ends and somewhat ragged in appearance, at least her hair wasn't oily.

Olivia cleared her throat. "So, are we going to stand here and chat or are we going to find our way out of this building?" Now that Olivia had some assistance, she had every intention of succeeding in her escape. She had tried before, many times, as some of the burn scars from cattle prods would testify, but one unarmed agent was entirely too easy to take down. It would be harder with two agents and an alien genius. Or so she reasoned at any rate.

"Oh, right, sorry!" the Doctor proclaimed, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, and putting up his right index finger as though asking her for a moment of her time. "I just want to check something really quick," he continued, moving dials on the sonic screwdriver and taking a pair of spectacles out of the breast pocket of his suit, placing them on his face ("They make him look smarter," Olivia saw Rose mouth silently from beside him). "You see, I came into this room because I was checking all the rooms for Rose and my screwdriver started bleeping and reacting to a special frequency that it's set to acknowledge when it comes into contact with Void Stuff or when it senses a rift in space and time." He looked up and noticed Olivia staring stoically at him, following only half of the jargon coming out his mouth. "Basically, it goes ding when there's stuff from another dimension."

Olivia nodded silently, finally understanding. The Doctor began moving about the room, taking readings on his sonic screwdriver and muttering quietly to himself, occasionally switching the dials and quietly listening to the fluctuating frequencies. Rose came and stood next to Olivia, watching with an amused yet fond look as the Doctor continued his investigation. "You know, when he starts going off like that, it's best if you just smile and pretend to follow what he's saying. Otherwise, he'll at you like you're stupid and then his ego just gets huge. And trust me, when his ego enters the room, there's no breathing room for anybody else," Rose advised to her conspiratorially.

"Don't worry. The Walter Bishop in my world is very much the same. The only difference being that usually Peter or our lab assistant Astrid is there to explain everything to me in lay men's terms. Would it frighten you if I told you that I actually think I followed the majority of what the Doctor said and didn't think he was crazy?"

"No, not really. Once I found myself talking like him, back when we were separated. The frightening thing was that I wasn't even exactly sure what it was I was talking about. It just sounded...right, and it was like I could understand it without really understanding. It was like there was a comfort in the half baked idea more than the fully fleshed out idea."

"I think I know what you mean," Olivia admitted quietly. The two women stood in quiet camaraderie while the Doctor continued to look around.

"You!" the Doctor exclaimed, pointing his finger at Olivia as he half bounced, half ran at her in excitement. "There's something very special about you, isn't there?" he asked, towering over her and looking deeply into her eyes as though the answer would be found there. He pointed the blue light of the sonic screwdriver in Olivia's face and Olivia tried not to go cross-eyed staring at the Doctor in her confusion. She definitely would need to have a word with him about personal space.

"Well, I am from an alternate dimension. Same as you guys," Olivia floundered, wondering if that was the cause of the beeping he had been worrying over.

"No! Well, yes, I mean you are from an alternate dimension. But, that's not what makes you special. No, there is something very, very _distinct_ about you," he muttered, taking yet another pair of spectacles out of his breast pocket. Olivia blinked twice when she saw that they were not really spectacles, but 3D glasses. She then raised her eyebrows when he put them on his face, giving out a cry that sounded like both excitement and dismay. He quickly took the 3D glasses off and put them on Rose's face, and Rose's face quickly changed expressions from confusion to understanding to intrigue to worry.

"Void stuff?" Rose questioned. "But she's never traveled through time, and merely traveling once through dimensions shouldn't give her that much!"

"Normally, I would say you were right. But, oh is she special," the Doctor gushed, once again invading Olivia's personal space and inspecting her face as though she were a fascinating science project he was curious to understand. He backed away from Olivia to explain. "When you travel through space and time, and especially dimensions, in a space ship such as Rose and I did, you acquire what we call Void Stuff. It's just a bit of background radiation-harmless, really-it accumulates as you cross what we call the Void. It's this space between dimensions where literally NOTHING exists. There's no up, no down, no light, no dark, no colour, no sepia tone. Catch my drift?" He paused in his narrative while Olivia nodded silently, taking it all in. "Any time you pass through a dimension, you cross this Void, and it is very unpleasant place to be, and it leaves its mark. Void Stuff. Now, for you to have as much of it surrounding you as my technology detects, then you managed to travel here without a space or time ship."

Olivia stared at him silently, answering his challenging expression with one of her own. He was looking at her, obviously expecting some sort of explanation for her abilities. Unfortunately for him (and for herself), her abilities were one portion of many in her life that she did not understand.

"I have a gift," she said simply. "I don't understand how it works. I just know that the Walter from my world could find these weak spots in the universe and by combining my powers with those of some others with similar talents, we were open to open a crack and travel over here. But they're all dead now and I don't know how to do it on my own."

"Well, one problem at a time, yeah?" Rose inserted. "Doctor, Olivia knows who that machine is for. It's the Secretary's son, Peter Bishop. Olivia said that he planned to return to Olivia's universe with her and that universe's Walter, but she got separated from them."

"Well, that explains this image then," the Doctor said, taking the familiar sketch of Peter standing on Walternate's device from inside his breast pocket.

"Where did you get that?" Rose asked, watching the Doctor as he carefully unfolded the paper.

"I found it in the Secretary's desk in his office before I came searching for you," he stated nonchalantly, taking the spectacles once again out of his pocket. At Rose's questioning glance, he went on to further explain that most of the facility had been called down to deal with the mess Rose had left behind on her run through the building, and the Secretary had left his office to make sure she had not succeeded in stealing any important documents. The Doctor had been hiding around the corner when the Secretary left his office and took the opportunity to peruse without the red tape of getting a search warrant. (Olivia's inner cop bristled a little at this, while the part that was tempered by hanging with John and Peter for so long merely smiled at his audacity). He had found the drawing in a locked drawer in the Secretary's desk and had pocketed it after a quick glance.

As he was talking, he moved the sonic screwdriver over the paper, checking for readings. Olivia noted the odd whirring sound it made, and wondered if it did that because it was technically from an alternate dimension than the one in which they were standing.

"How do you fit all that stuff in there?" Olivia couldn't help but ask, gesturing to the Doctor's suit breast pocket. He had pulled two pairs of spectacles and a drawing out from his pocket, and was about to place his sonic screwdriver in there as well, and as far as Olivia could tell, the breast pocket did not look as though there were actually anything in it.

"Bigger on the inside," the Doctor answered with a cheeky wink. Rose simply rolled her eyes as though the saying were an old and worn-out joke.

Rose and Olivia crowded around the Doctor and stared down at the sketch that the Observers had given Olivia in her original reality. Olivia felt the familiar trickle of dread spread down her spine as she looked at the images of fire sprouting from Peter's eyes. "My god," Rose muttered. "The Secretary would do that to his own son?"

"Some things go deeper than grief," the Doctor muttered darkly, staring down at the drawing and studying it with what Olivia would classify as a sick fascination. If the Doctor's perusal could save Peter, however, she was more than willing to let him be as fascinated as he liked. "Vengeance is a powerful motivator. And vengeance mixed with power? That's absolute. And anything that is absolute corrupts. 25 plus years being bent on vengeance? The Secretary's mind is incapable of seeing anything else. I doubt he would even recognize any other emotion if he felt it."

The Doctor sounded almost as though he felt pity and sympathy for the Secretary. Olivia did not. She saw only the man who had threatened her universe and who had ordered the death of Charlie Francis, and who had plans to kill her best friend, and she was gripped with a sudden urge to face him. She wanted to look him in the eye and destroy that machine, and she wanted to do it _now_.

"I don't know what the two of you have planned, but before I get out of here, I am going to destroy that machine."

Her announcement caused the Doctor to stop perusing the drawings, and he looked at her with a small smirk. He quickly folded the drawing and stuck it back in his breast pocket and Rose stood herself up straight and put on what Olivia concluded to be her fighting face.

"I like the way you think, Olivia Dunham," the Doctor said. "Let's see what we can do about saving your universe."

They stepped out of the door to the cell, only to find armed guards at both sides with guns pointed straight at their heads. The Secretary of Defense was standing directly in front of them, barring their view of the window to the ocean water in the New York Harbor, a hard-lined expression his face. Olivia could tell that however much the Doctor and Rose had thought they had been covert in their infiltration of the Department of Defense, the Secretary had been more than ready for them. He also was apparently aware of the fact that either of them would never leave the building without the other. Olivia felt the balloon of hope she had been feeling rise up begin to deflate. The Secretary had planned this-he knew the Doctor would try to save Rose Tyler and had placed her in a cell with Olivia. Olivia knew with a cold certainty that whatever the Secretary had planned for all of them that it would be more painful than the hours of interrogation she had already been subjected to endure.

She looked at Rose out of the corner of her eye. Rose did not really seem to be concerned at all about the guns pointed at her, but was merely looking at the Doctor in question. The Doctor, for his part, did not look particularly worried either. He merely gave a small smile and put his hands up in surrender, and Olivia felt herself do the same (though she looked nowhere near as cheerful as the Doctor when she did so). "Well," the Doctor said, an unconcerned tone in his voice that made Olivia raise her eyebrows and stare at him, "I think we may have to adjust our plan just slightly."

* * *

There were many parts of the current situation that the Doctor very much did not like. For one, he did not like being strapped to a chair with metal arm restraints. They tended to snag the fabric of his suit jacket and, despite the fact that his suits always looked well worn, the suits were expensive. (The Doctor was briefly very thankful that he no longer wore the long brown coat Janis Joplin had given him. He hated having to stitch up one-of-a-kind coats with cheap threads). Secondly, he did not like the fact that the Secretary had been so confident as to restrain them in chairs in the middle of the room with the very machine that he, Olivia, and Rose had been planning to destroy. It reeked of egotism, and the Doctor couldn't stand _aliens_ with large egos, much less humans (who were at the bottom of the rung as far as intelligence goes, in most cases). But mostly, the Doctor really disliked having guns pointed at him, especially at his now-very-much-human head. He no longer had the ability to regenerate (so far as he knew) and he rather liked the head he currently sported-it had deep dark eyes and a nice smile, and really great hair. Rose rather seemed to like it, and he was rather fond of it himself. Even more than disliking the guns pointed at his own head, he disliked the guns that were pointed at Rose's. He was an unstable man at the best of times, only seconds away from genocidal anger, and if a bullet so much as grazed Rose Tyler, the Oncoming Storm would make its appearance. He just wished that there was some way he could warn the Secretary about that and have the Secretary feel the least bit threatened.

The Doctor quickly went through his assets and pros. Rose and Olivia were still alive and in the same room with him. That was good. The Secretary wasn't shooting at them (yet), and that was also good. The Doctor recognized where he was in the Department of Defense and knew the way to the main exit. This was VERY, VERY good. The Doctor still had his sonic screwdriver, which was good, but not useful given that it was in his breast pocket and he was restrained. Still, it was nice to know his dimensionally transcendental pockets worked and could fool the guards enough that they didn't notice the screwdriver when they frisked him.

The Secretary did not appear to be too concerned with the group of them at the moment, merely leaving the guards to look after them. The Secretary was instead talking with his scientists, gesturing towards different parts of the controls and shouting at the scientists for good measure. Apparently, the Secretary planned to use that machine soon, which intrigued the Doctor as its main power source was still currently in another dimension. He looked to his right and briefly watched the profile of Olivia Dunham. She was staring at the movement of the Secretary, her jaw set tight and a "no surrender" attitude emanating from her very image. The Doctor felt a small surge of pride, despite knowing he had no influence on this woman's strength. She would have made a good companion, back in his traveling days-smart, resourceful, compassionate, and reasonable. But, she was had such a strong sense of responsibility that he knew she would have been one of the few to turn down his offer of seeing the universe. He respected her a lot for that. She lifted her head slightly when she saw Walter Bishop look at her and the Doctor couldn't help but feel that she was mentally sticking her tongue out at the Secretary. He almost laughed, and as he looked at Olivia, her head straight and her hair falling in a curtain next to her face, he was seized with a moment of nostalgia. Looking at her from the side, he thought that if he was to put a straw hat on her head and dress her in the appropriate outfit, she would look just like the second incarnation of his Time Lord friend Romana. It had been years since he had allowed himself to think of the friend he had inevitably killed when he destroyed his own planet at the end of the Time War, and as always, the memory was an all-consuming one. He felt Rose's stare coming to him from his left side and he spared her a small smile to assure her that he was okay, before returning to his musings. Yes, Olivia had the look of Romana and the soul of Leela of the Sevateem. An interesting combination to be sure, but one that he could not help but feel fond of and want to protect. He bet she probably even had a bit of the Donna Noble slap in that palm of hers. A perfect companion. Too bad she was too responsible and he was without a TARDIS. He was sure Rose would have enjoyed her company.

He was broken from his musings once again by a familiar, educated London voice speaking to the Secretary. "In order for the energy to be amassed correctly, the body must maintain a steady heartbeat rhythm of120 beats per minute and a blood pressure of 130 over 80. Minor fluctuation and margin of error are accounted for. Anything outside the boundary of twenty over or under and the universes will lose syncopation," the voice reported. The Doctor looked at the bearer of the voice and felt his lone heart plummet into the vicinity of his stomach. He looked at Rose to see her staring at the voice too, a broken-hearted, disappointed look on her face. The voice belonged to Dr. Martha Jones-beautiful, brilliant, brave Martha Jones, who had faced the Daleks, walked the world alone for a year, and who had laughed in the Master's face as he threatened to kill her. In one universe, she had done all those amazing things, and in the universe he was stuck in, she was happily taking orders from the Secretary. For the first time since he had been stranded in the universe with Rose, staring at the spot the TARDIS had been moments before, he felt a strong desire to go back to his home universe. For the briefest of seconds, being stuck in a universe where the world was askew enough that any version of Martha was willing to work for a man like that, was too much to handle. He took a deep breath, reminded himself that he and Rose were happy and that the only Martha that mattered was happy and saving the world in his original universe, and set his mind to finding a way out of that hellish room and getting Olivia back to her own dimension.

Step 1) Get the Secretary to talk.

"So, Dr. Bishop! Mr. Secretary...Can I can you Walter? You see, Walter, there's one thing I can't understand. I mean, I get why you're angry at the other universe. They stole your son, they made the dimensions unstable. Wanting to make them pay? That's natural. Wrong and rude, of course, yes. But natural. What I don't understand is why you would kill your own son to do it. That's seems rather counterproductive in the grand scheme of things, and you're a genius, so surely you wouldn't do such a stupid move as all that."

"You're assuming that my son is the most important part of this whole equation, Doctor," the Secretary announced, abandoning his mission of terrorizing his poor scientists and instead leaning against the controls facing the Doctor and his companions. He was leaning quite casually, and gesticulated as he spoke, as though he were merely lecturing to a room of students, and not holding them all at gunpoint. "Rather, you have to ask yourself the big question. What good can be gained from the sacrifice? Bigger pictures, Doctor. That's what I'm looking at-the safety of my world from more rifts caused by that woman's," (Dr. Bishop sneered in Olivia's direction), "world. I didn't design the machine to require my son's DNA. That just happened to be the case. I'm afraid it is something of an Abraham and Isaac situation. There is a mission that _must_ be done, but don't you dare insinuate that it does not hurt every inch of me that the mission involves the killing of my own son."

The Secretary turned away, indicating that he had answered the Doctor's question and the conversation was over. The Doctor had never been very good at taking hints and merely pressed on.

"But why the big trap? Why work so hard to get Rose and me here in the same room with Olivia? What good could we possibly do for this whole plan of yours? Surely you knew we would only try and stop you."

The Secretary chuckled. "Yes, it was quite amusing to watch you try. You had some good ideas. Sadly, Doctor, I'm afraid for once you were not my ultimate game plan. You see, I merely need you for the technical support. My son was supposed to figure out the wiring on the device, but _someone_," (the Doctor saw Olivia give a self-satisfied smirk to his right), "had to convince my son to leave before it was finished. And my staff is too imbecilic to figure it out themselves!" Walter ended on a yell. The scientists all looked sheepishly at one another and continued working as though they had not heard his outburst.

"Why don't you put it together yourself then?" the Doctor asked, hoping this would tip the Secretary into an enraged mood. Megalomaniacs never paid as much attention to their surroundings and what their prisoners were doing if they got angry. It was a fatal flaw. But, no such luck. The Secretary did not seem offended at all.

"Sadly, I was never the mechanical type. Give me a formula or a corpse and I can do anything. Electrical wiring and currents were always much more the thing of the generation under mine. But you, Doctor. You have doctorates in every field of science I've ever heard of, and some I'm sure you created off the top of your head. You're going to fix the device for me."

The question came out of the Doctor's mouth before he could stop it. "And what if I refuse?"

"Then I will have my guard put a bullet through Rose Tyler's head," the Secretary ordered, looking at a guard who proceeded to place the muzzle of his gun against Rose's temple for good measure. The Doctor clenched his fists together.

"Even if I could fix it, that still doesn't explain how you plan to get Peter Bishop here. You said he traveled back to the other universe, correct? How do you plan to get him back?"

The Doctor glanced at Olivia, taking note of the obvious relief she felt at knowing that Peter (and most likely her version of Walter) had survived. That only begged the question of why they had left without her. From the look crossing Olivia's face-the confusion, the hurt, followed by the understanding and the anger-the brilliant woman was figuring it out almost as quickly as he had. Peter and the rest had never come to get her back because they hadn't realized she had been missing. He watched as Olivia's hands fisted in anger at the knowledge that she had been replaced. The Doctor noted his clenched fists, and Rose's clenched fists, and Olivia's, and then noted the sheer number of guns pointed at them all. If a fight broke out, the place would quickly become a powder keg. The Doctor inwardly smiled as an idea began to form inside his head.

"Why, I'm going to use the one thing my son could never turn down. The chance to help a pretty girl in distress. You see, he always was a bit too open with his emotions; it's what made Olivia as a switch-out so easy. All my Agent Dunham has to do is flirt a bit and be his friend and he'll never notice the difference."

"He's smart," Olivia cut in, her voice coming out hoarse in the large room. "He'll figure it out."

"I know," the Secretary said with a smile. "I'm counting on it. When he realizes that he has the wrong Olivia Dunham, you and I both know that he'll do anything he can to get the real you back. It may take him a while (it has taken him four months already, in fact), but the machine is waking up, which means he's about to be on his way."

"You know _nothing_ about your son. He would never get on that machine, not even for me. He knows that the universe I come from is so much bigger than me."

"...Does he?"

And the Doctor knew that the seed of doubt had been planted in Olivia Dunham. He knew that Olivia believed with her whole heart that Peter would never get on that machine of his own free will, but he also knew that "belief" did not necessarily mean that one could not doubt. Luckily for Olivia Dunham, her faith in Peter would never have to be put to the test, for he had the perfect plan for getting them out of that place.

Step 2) Destroy the Machine.

Two hours later saw the Doctor on his back underneath the device's controls, his hands covered in black oils and his fingers sporting burns from crisscrossed electrical lines. His Ninth incarnation had always been much more adept at the maintenance of the TARDIS than his current (and now, only) form was and he was suddenly remembering why in the last few years of traveling he had merely banged on the TARDIS controls with a mallet instead of climbing inside his ship's inner workings. Except for the few times when he had no choice...like the current situation for example.

"Rassilon," he muttered, sticking yet another singed fingertip into his mouth and sucking on it. "The bloody particle accelerator is as antiquated as a butter churner at a disco club," he muttered darkly to himself, continuing on to insulting Americans, followed by North Americans, followed by the whole of NATO, followed by the UN, to just insulting humanity in general. When people were holding Rose and him hostage at gunpoint, with the whole of a universe at stake, the Doctor tended to get rather testy. He just kept reminding himself to be patient for five more minutes.

"I think it's finished," he announced with flourish. For despite hating having to work on the evil contraption, he saw no reason why he shouldn't be proud of his genius. "You simply needed to attach the particle accelerator to the rotating power cufflink and allow the excess energy to fizzle out through the stabilizers and use a laser beam to focus the energy into a specific point in space and time. Easy-peasey."

"Good," said the Secretary. "Then you won't mind testing it for us."

"Testing it?" the Doctor asked. "The machine only works with your son's DNA. It would be pointless to-"

"To focus the energy on the other world, it is true that I would require my son. But to simply see if the machine functions properly, I'll be content with just having enough energy to tear a small hole. Any volunteers?" the Secretary asked, looking around the room with a large smile and raised eyebrows, as though anyone in their right mind would volunteer to get on that death trap.

"How about you, Rose Tyler?" the Secretary proposed, stepping too close in Rose's direction for the Doctor's comfort. The Doctor, embracing the freedom his work on the controls had required, stepped to Rose's side in defense.

"You won't touch her," he said, giving the Secretary his best glare.

"I suppose you'll volunteer in her place."

"If it means that you'll leave her alone, then yes."

The Secretary only smiled and made no promises, not that the Doctor had expected him to do. The Doctor quickly leaned down and embraced Rose in a hug, pulling away and stroking her face and gripping her hands in his. "You know what to do, Rose Tyler," he told her, staring her in the eyes briefly before quickly kissing her forehead and backing away. The guards grabbed his arms and started to pull him towards the machine while the Secretary began to mess with the controls. Rose began pulling at her restraints in futile gestures, screaming at the Secretary and begging the guards to stop. She was so stressed there were tears dripping down her face and her blonde hair was sticking to her cheeks. The Doctor felt his heart stop slightly at the gesture, remembering the last time he had seen her sob so-on Bad Wolf Bay five years before when he saw her from the opposite side of the Void-and just like that day he could do nothing to comfort her. He glanced briefly at Olivia to see that her jaw was clenched tight and she was pulling at her restraints as well, though her emotions were well in check.

The Doctor struggled briefly and managed to deck one of the soldiers as they went to tie his right hand to the post. The Doctor had never had particularly strong fists in this incarnation, however, and the man merely wiped the blood from his lip and pulled the Doctor's other arm behind his back in a very uncomfortable position until one hand was secured. Upon securing the Doctor, the men quickly retreated off the platform of the device, and the Doctor was stuck hearing the ever increasing pitch of the device as it warmed up and the crescent shaped obelisks above his head began to spin. The Doctor watched in fascination as a weird film developed between where he stood and the world off the platform. Rose's face became nothing more than a distorted, fuchsia bubble and all he could hear was a faint ringing sound getting louder and louder and making his head ache.

The last coherent statement the Doctor made was, "_This_...is gonna hurt."

After that, all the Doctor heard was screaming and it was a few moments before he realized that the screaming was coming from him.

* * *

Rose stopped her hysterical crying outburst the moment she realized everyone's attention was focused completely on the ball of energy developing around the Doctor. She smiled at the thought that no one had suspected a thing. It was one of the perks of being the Vitex heiress-the gossip magazines always made you out to be a whingey brat if you were female and rich, and times like these were great for exploiting that commonly held belief. Everyone had focused on her crying and had not even paid attention to what she had quietly hidden in her hand-the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. When he leaned over her to hug her, he deftly slid one hand up to his breast pocket and pawned the screwdriver out of his pocket and into her lap. He had proceeded to caress her face, keeping his body steadfast between her front and the rest of the room that was morbidly watching their 'goodbye.' The last portion of her he had grabbed before kissing her forehead was her hand, in which he placed the screwdriver with his well chosen words. "You know what to do." And indeed she did.

Setting 4747-rotates the power cuff link in the opposite direction, reversing the energy in the particle accelerator and causing an explosion. Not quite as big a bang as an explosive would do, but it would destroy the machine and ensure enough of a distraction for all of them to get out.

She set the screwdriver against the restraint next to her arm and breathed a sigh of relief when her arm was made free. She quickly did the same to the other and quickly rearranged the settings on the screwdriver to 4747. (The fact that she had memorized the setting for reversing something's polarity was beyond ridiculous in her mind, but she had told her original Doctor that she wanted some Spock. Apparently, this setting was what he thought she meant). She then pointed the sonic screwdriver at the device in flourish, trying to ignore the sound of the Doctor's screaming. She watched in awe as the device's hanging obelisks began to slow down and start spinning in the opposite direction, gaining speed fast. The Doctor collapsed to the ground in a dead faint, his arms still attached the poles, and the Secretary cursed as he went to the controls to try and re-work the system to its original purpose. But it was too late, the obelisks were gaining momentum and beginning to swing outwards the wrong way, the machine making a noise that gave an indication that something was very wrong.

Rose heard Dr. Martha Jones' voice yell for everyone to get down just seconds before one of the obelisks swung off completely, hitting one soldier and swinging him into the wall, crushing him with its force with a disgusting crunch. The room broke out in panic and confusion as more pieces of the machine started to break off, and the Secretary merely stood at the controls, trying to salvage as much of his operation as he could. Rose ran to Olivia's chair and quickly began setting her free from her restraints. The second that was done, she ran towards the machine, thanking whatever higher powers existed for her years of gymnastics training as she ducked and dodged random bits of flying debris (though she did have one rather size-able chunk of machine hit her in the arm, and then later felt a piece of shrapnel dig its way into her thigh). With her cuts and bruises, she made her way quickly to the Doctor, untying his hands with the skill of a person way too used to rescuing her comrade from similar situations, and, pulling most of his weight onto her shoulder that hadn't been hit by half-a-tonne debris, she ran down the side of the machine and threw herself into Olivia, knocking all three of them to the ground. Rose heard one last final _chink_ and quickly covered hers and the Doctor's heads as the machine exploded in a rather unimpressive fireball (considering its size).

In the silence of the aftermath, the room mostly deserted from the previously fleeing guards and scientists, the Doctor (whom Rose had quickly smacked awake for fear of him having a concussion should he stay asleep) and Rose watched as Olivia approached the Secretary. She had a gun in her hand, most likely from one of the guards who had been running around in fear, and as she approached the man she cocked it, pulling back the hammer. "You almost destroyed my universe," she said, her voice harsh and steady.

"Yes."

"It's because of you that my Agent Charlie Francis is dead."

Olivia aimed the gun steadily at the Secretary's head.

"Yes, though that was not part of the overall agenda, I must confess. He was an unfortunate casualty."

"You were going to kill my best friend."

Rose watched as Olivia's hand began to shake slightly.

"Yes, _I am_."

Rose watched as the Secretary and Olivia began a staring contest. Olivia's hand was shaking and her finger was trembling on the trigger, ready to squeeze it at any second and Rose felt the Doctor tense beside her, his hatred of guns strong even in the face of Olivia's troubles. Suddenly, there was a loud crack and Walter Bishop fell to the floor in a crumbled heap. Rose watched in disbelief as Olivia quietly holstered the gun in the waistline of her pants and turned to them both with a stony face.

"Let's run," she said. And they did.

* * *

It wasn't until they were back on the mainland, using the hidden boat that the Doctor and Rose had used to sneak onto Liberty Island in the first place, that Rose spoke with Olivia about what had happened. They were walking aimlessly down the streets of New York City, trying not to garner attention, when Rose broached the subject. She was breathing a bit labouriously, trying to keep up with Olivia's quick pace.

"So, why did you do it?"

"Do what?" Olivia asked, her breathing not quite as laboured as Rose's (Olivia's strides were longer), but with an exhausted wheeze to it. Rose couldn't help but feel that the sooner the Doctor got Olivia home, the better it would be for her.

"Why did you let him live? I mean, he said that he would come after Peter again. You had your gun trained him and you were so angry. I was _certain_ you were going to shoot him."

Olivia stopped walking suddenly and turned to face Rose. The Doctor continued on for a few paces before he realized he was alone and turned around to rejoin them. For once, he said nothing and listened to hear what Olivia would say, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"I wanted to kill him. I can think of a million reasons why it's the best thing to do, and that's just for my world. Who knows how many more there could be for yours if we discussed them. But he's Peter's _father_. And no matter what he does, that's what he'll always be. And I can't take that away from my friend. He'd never forgive me." She took off walking again. "I'd never forgive myself," she added, so quietly that Rose almost didn't hear her.

"Well, good on you, Olivia Dunham," the Doctor proclaimed, barely breathing hard as the women next to him laboured to keep up with his long strides. "I never have liked guns. You have an amazing right hook though! Even I had to admire that."

"You say you don't like guns, but you had set the screwdriver to make the device explode..." Olivia left the implication to her words hang in the air.

"Well, guns are bad. People die everyday by guns. That's the easy way of fighting. But explosives? That's entirely different!"

There was no credence to his argument, and all three of them knew it. For some reason that none of them knew of, they let him get away with it.

"So, Olivia," the Doctor began, turning around to face her as he walked backwards, engaging her in conversation as though the possibility that he might collide with something behind him were as infinitesimal as getting struck by lightning. "What do you say that we get you home, eh?"

"You can do that?" Olivia asked, the hope she had suppressed earlier in the day (had it really only been a few hours? Rose wondered) blooming on her face again.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said, a wide smile gracing his face and the bounce in his step returning. "I can have you home faster than you can say Raxacoricofallapatorious."

"Then, yes. I want to go home," Olivia said, her voice getting breathless with anticipation.

"Well, then," the Doctor said, turning to face the proper direction again and maintaining his stride with the two women, "Allons-y."


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: See first chapter.

**A/N**: Thanks for all the reviews, you guys. Seriously. I hope you enjoy the final chapter.

**Chapter 3**

By the time the Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Olivia Dunham reached the opera house, Rose was more than ready for their adventure to be over. They had been walking quickly through New York City for the previous two hours, hoping to reach the theatre without taking many of the main roads, thereby avoiding some of the surveillance cameras. It had worked (to the best of their knowledge), but had cost them an extra forty-five minutes of walking. It was after dark by the time they stepped through the doors of the opera house, and the dim illumination of the security lights cast an haunting hue about the structure. Rose felt a shiver go up her spine and was not quite sure if it came from a chill, the vibe from the mostly shadowed theatre, or if it came down to ionic residue from Olivia's dimension hopping. Whatever the cause, she allowed herself a brief shiver that she knew the Doctor didn't miss, and he quickly and quietly took off his suit jacket and placed it nonchalantly on Rose's shoulders. As they walked down the center aisle toward the stage, Rose spared him a brief smile of thanks, which he quietly returned.

"Olivia, this is where you crossed through, correct?" the Doctor asked, hopping onto the stage with the grace of a gazelle, his long limbs making him look like a large brown spider climbing up the side of the stage. Olivia quickly climbed up after him, with a sort of feline grace, grabbing the Doctor's proffered hand to help her rise to her feet. Rose took a couple of seconds longer to climb, being shorter than the other two, but she also found herself standing on the stage with an exhausted sigh.

"Yeah, this is the place," Olivia confirmed, her eyes searching the darkness of the opera house, most likely in case they were being pursued by the Secretary and his guards. "Wait, how did you know that?" Olivia continued, her expression suddenly confused, but not wary. Out of her depth Olivia may be, but Rose could tell that Olivia trusted them. Rose felt a small burst of triumph, for she could tell from her brief adventure with this woman that trust was not something easily earned from Olivia Dunham.

The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver. "It goes ding when there's Void Stuff, remember? We originally tracked the anomaly of the rift in space and time to this place. But it was weird. By the time we had gotten here, it was nothing more than a scab. Normally a crack stays a crack until I fix it, but not here. Here it was healing over, and I couldn't figure out why. That is, until I met you."

"Me? What did I have to do with it?"

"Oh, you are special, Olivia Dunham," the Doctor gushed, smiling at her with such a wide smile that his eyes were crinkling at the corners.

Rose expected Olivia to stare at the Doctor in confusion or perhaps amusement. Instead, Olivia merely looked resigned, as though she had known all along that there was something unusual about herself, but had been frightened of it and was now ready to face up to it. But she did not appear to be very happy at the prospect. Rose thought back to all those people she had met on her adventures through time and space that the Doctor had termed "special" and thought (in a slightly pessimistic fashion) that maybe Olivia was right to be morose.

"How am I special?" Olivia asked, her voice half assertive and half timid. Before meeting Olivia, Rose would never have assumed a voice could hold both antithetical emotions, but somehow Agent Dunham managed to pull it off. Rose found herself waiting for the Doctor's reply with interest. He had not shared his findings about Olivia with her yet, and she was almost as curious about the situation as Dunham herself appeared to be.

"To travel between dimensions, even I had to use this little yellow button...thingy. You see, usually a rift in time and space has to already be in existence before one can even try to cross over. Before you came over here, this rift was not here. I know because I monitor them; that's my job. So, somehow, you not only managed to _create_ a rift in time and space (which is impossible, by the way), but you also managed to travel without a honing button to navigate the Void, which not even I have attempted. You can see why I'm completely enthralled, yes? I mean, really, you are...brilliant."

As the Doctor spoke, he was gesticulating wildly with his hands, and at one point had stuck his finger so close to Olivia's face that Olivia had been forced to move her head backwards to avoid getting whacked in the eye. Rose merely smiled as she watched them. The Doctor was flamboyant by nature, and to someone as reserved as Olivia, he had to appear even more insane than Rose often took him to be. To her credit, Olivia merely stared at him and took it in stride, obviously well used to flamboyant, overenthusiastic personalities.

"It wasn't just me," Olivia reminded the Doctor. "There were three other people like me who helped. When I was a child, my version of Walter used this drug on me and a few other children. He called it Cortexiphan. It was supposed to unlock special abilities, and he wanted to use us to protect our dimension in what he feared would be a coming war. Most of the abilities have backfired as we accessed them in adulthood, and only 3 of us were very successful at learning to control them. One of them died crossing over and one exploded not long after we got here. All their abilities just went haywire and Nick and I couldn't access ours at all. It's like they were blocked somehow."

"No, they're not blocked, and they're not gone. It's just neither of you knew how to access them here. When you connected over there, you focused on your bond to each other and pushed outwards. It was a good idea, but it took far too much effort and the same ending could have been accomplished in a much more easy fashion. Instead of connecting to a person in the same dimension as the one you're already in, and looking outward, you should instead link to someone in the dimension you're looking to reach."

"How does that help? I mean, unless you have telepathy, how do they answer you?"

"Oh, I'm not talking about the mind. I'm referring to the basic fundamentals of matter-atoms, elements."

Olivia merely shook her head, and even Rose lifted her eyebrows in slight confusion. "I'm afraid I don't get it quite yet," Olivia stated. Rose gave Olivia a small smirk in shared confusion while the Doctor merely rolled his eyes and Rose could practically hear him think "stupid ape" in a northern accent that had long since disappeared.

The Doctor was quiet a moment, thinking of a good example of which Olivia would be able to relate. "Poles!" he yelled at suddenly, clicking his fingers. "Magnets. Things are drawn together at their most basic elements because they contain properties that, though they are completely opposite, call to each other. You and your friends crossed over the hard way. You gathered your collective strength and shot it out into the Void, hoping it would be enough to punch through. Luckily, for you, it was. However, what you should have done, and what would probably have saved the life of the one who died on the passage over, was allow yourself to call out elementally to molecules that would answer back."

"But how would I know that? How do molecules answer each other?"

The Doctor gave Olivia a look that stated quite plainly that he felt she was being deliberately obtuse. "Oh, come on, Agent Dunham. You know this. It drew you here in the first place."

The Doctor gave no further elaboration and Rose only smiled softly at him when he turned his eyes on her. Olivia still looked confused, but Rose had figured it out and understood probably better than anyone else in the multiverse would understand.

"I still don't get it. I mean, I just came here to save-Oh." Olivia looked shocked for a minute and then took on a pensive expression. "But what good does that do me now? I no longer have any help to boost my powers, whatever that power actually is."

"Oh, you never needed them, Olivia Dunham. You are _cooking_ with energy; you're leaving miniature rifts behind you everywhere you go. It's how I found you and Rose in that cell, remember? You're leaking radiation. Your molecules are already screaming. You're just not listening for an answer."

"So, how do I listen? I mean, I sat in silence for nearly four months and there's nothing. I don't feel any different."

"Humans. You're so literal. It's not like the molecules are going to whisper a secret in your ears. I'll have to boost the signal."

"How are you going to do that?" Olivia asked, looking at the Doctor with slight trepidation, as though she feared he would begin to do weird experiments on her. Instead, the Doctor merely raised his hands up to both sides of her head.

"Do you mind?" he asked, wiggling his fingers and gesturing towards her temples.

"What are you going to do? A Vulcan mind meld?"

"What is it with people and Star Trek? No, not a mind meld. Close enough, I suppose. Less invasive. I don't know if it would normally work given my now-human status, but given your extreme abilities, you should be able to do most of the work yourself. I'm just going to act as a catalyst, so to speak. I'm going to go into your head and focus the signal, but you're going to have to focus on your opposites, on the things that can help call you back."

"So, I basically click my heels and say there's no place like home?" Olivia dryly asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Well, you can, although the words will have little impact," the Doctor retorted back.

"Will I go out in a flash or what? How will you not be dragged over there with me?"

"I don't have any opposites in the other universe. I have plenty of answering molecules keeping me right here," the Doctor answered, giving Rose a look out of the corner of his eye and his lip quirked just slightly. Rose felt herself grow warm despite the chill of the room. She took a brief moment to note to herself that the Doctor always said the most romantic things about her when he was speaking with other people. When he spoke _to_ her, it came across as either rude or ridiculous, but rarely romantic. Rose began to think that maybe she should spend more time listening to him speak to other people if she wanted to hear him be sweet.

"Now, we're going to have to hurry," the Doctor continued, placing his fingers lightly on Olivia's temples and staring into her eyes, "because the Secretary is going to try and get you back, and I doubt we'll manage to escape for a second time." Rose stood silently to the side, watching in fascination. When he was a Time Lord, she had seen him perform this trick exactly one time-on Chloe Webber when she was possessed by an alien known as the Isolus-but she had never seen him do it to a non-possessed person and never as a part human.

"What do I do?" Olivia asked, her voice strong and all business.

"Just close your eyes, picture doors closing on things in your mind that you don't want me to see, and focus on those things I mentioned-the things that called you here in the first place. Think of them and feel them out. Your group found them earlier without even looking for them-it's what pulled you in-so if you search, it should be easy to find. But you're going to have to trust me."

"I do," Olivia answered softly, and when Rose and the Doctor looked at her face they saw that she was smiling at him. It was tight lipped and showed no teeth, but it was a smile. "Rose," Olivia called out, looking at Rose out of the corner of her eye.

"Yeah?"

"I just wanted to say thanks before I go."

Before Olivia or the Doctor could say anything else, Rose had launched herself forward and knocked the Doctor's arms out of the way, embracing Olivia in a hug. Before letting go, she decided to leave some parting words of wisdom in Agent Dunham's ear. She spoke quietly, so as to the keep the Doctor from hearing (some things should stay between girls, Rose often thought). "I know that you haven't thought of this yet, but I've been where you're standing and eventually you're going to wonder just what has occurred between your friend and the alternate version of yourself. After I was reunited with the Doctor for a few days, I found myself wondering how many people he had fallen in love with in my absence, and it could have eaten away at me. But I remembered something that I want to share with you. You crossed universes for him, which means you must have cared deeply about him. That sort of caring isn't instinctual. It's earned. And if he earned that sort of compassion from you, I think he's earned some trust too. Maybe even forgiveness."

Rose drew away and looked Olivia in the eyes, holding onto her elbows. Olivia nodded in understanding and swallowed.

"It was an honour meeting you, Rose."

"And you, Special Agent Olivia Dunham."

With one last squeeze of the elbows, Rose let go of Olivia's arms and, sharing a brief glance with the Doctor, stepped out of the way for him to continue his work.

"Okay, Olivia. Now, if this works, it'll happen instantaneously, so know this now," the Doctor began. He stopped for a few seconds and Olivia and Rose waited in baited breath for the other shoe to drop. He finally continued. "It's been an absolute pleasure saving multiple universes with you." Rose felt herself breathe again.

"Thank you. You're not so sloppy yourself," Olivia responded, that now familiar half smile appearing at the side of her face.

The Doctor put his fingers back up to Olivia's temples and closed his eyes. Rose watched as Olivia's quickly followed suit. "Be brilliant, Olivia Dunham. Be completely brilliant."

After this, there was no more talking and Rose watched as the Doctor and Olivia furrowed their eyebrows in concentration. After about half a minute, their breathing started to synchronize, seemingly without their notice, and in a flash of blue light, Olivia was gone.

"So, Doctor, are you saying the whole point of this little adventure is that opposites attract?" Rose asked when the Doctor had opened his eyes.

"I'm not saying it. Science does. It's what keeps the Earth in one piece, the planets rotating around the sun, weather patterns, all of it."

"I thought that was gravity," she responded, stepping closer to him as she spoke to stand with him at centre-stage.

"Gravity is little more than poles once again calling to each other and colliding in the middle."

"So, this wasn't just you playing match maker again like you did with my mum and Pete?"

"Not at all. The universe had already done most of the hard work for me this time. Plus, it really was the only way to get her home."

"So, I'm your opposite, am I?" Rose asked, tipping her head back to stare up at the Doctor, her body mere inches from his, and she couldn't help but feel there must be truth in this particular science he was spewing because she felt the electricity crackle between them. She felt it slither underneath her skin and cause a familiar tingling sensation at the tips of her fingers and toes. Her skin rose up in gooseflesh and her heart beat an irregular rhythm in her chest.

"In every way. You balance me perfectly," he muttered, leaning down towards her as though to kiss her. Before any contact could be made, sirens became audible in the distance and the Doctor raised his head and turned his ear toward the sound. "Ah," he eloquently stated, "it appears we got Olivia home just in time."

Rose grabbed the Doctor's hand and intertwined her fingers with his. "We should run, yeah?"

"Most definitely."

They glanced at each other, smiled, and did just that.

* * *

When Olivia opened her eyes, it was to see the rundown opera building she and the others had stood in four months previously. She did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed that it looked the same as it had when she had left it months before. She stood still for a few moments, merely breathing in the air of her home universe and felt for the first time just how exhausted she truly was. Her legs were shaking, her head was pounding, she felt half-starved, and she wanted nothing more than to climb under her covers and sleep for another year with the sounds of Ella and Rachel's laughter emanating from her living room. The image in her mind only made her more enervated and it took a force of will to convince her legs to move one leg in front of the other and not simply collapse from underneath her.

She needed to find a phone and the sooner, the better. She could collapse when she had debriefed everyone on the situation and not before. There was a war coming, and soon. She, the Doctor, and Rose may have briefly thwarted his plans, but she had no doubts that he would rebuild the machine (which she had already labeled 'The Doomsday Device' in her head) and find some way to force Peter to stand on it. She would like to believe that because they were both finally in the same universe that they were safe, but she was too intelligent for that. They would never be safe until the Secretary was stopped and he would never stop until he was dead and Olivia did not have it within her to kill any version of Peter's father, much less his real one.

When she reached the doors of the opera house, she held on to the frame to steady herself. It would have been entirely too easy for her to focus merely on how tired she was, given how often she needed to take a break and regain her strength. But she didn't think about herself at all. She focused on the mission: Warn the others. So she slowly but surely picked up one foot and placed it in front of the other over and over and over again, going on autopilot and memory to a nearby diner that she and Charlie had eaten at while on stakeouts or while in town to interview witnesses or suspects. She walked up to the counter and asked to use their phone, allowing her exhaustion and physical pain to show through to the waitress manning the counter. Olivia hated to show weakness, but she knew in this instance that it would help her achieve her goal of getting the phone, and in addition, she was too bone weary to care about maintaining an image of strength.

The waitress brought back a white chord-less phone, and once she had been assured that the call wouldn't cost any money to the restaurant, allowed Olivia to use it. Olivia quickly dialed the first number that came to mind and waited with baited breath for the voice to answer, hoping he would still be awake and not out with her alternate self. If he was out with her, the conversation could have become awkward very quickly.

"Hello?" came Peter's voice, tired and groggy sounding. Olivia felt her breath stop for a second, and she had to take a second to remind her vocal chords how to make sound. She was shocked to discover that she had forgotten the sound of his voice. She remembered snippets of it-the way he would say her name, the slight bite it would take in a sarcastic remark-but the tones and timbre had dulled in her memory. She wondered for a brief moment what other traits about him, Walter, Astrid, Broyles, Rachel, and Ella she had forgotten or distorted during her captivity.

"Hello?" came Peter's voice again, this time slightly annoyed.

Olivia reminded herself that it was the middle of the night, and she was calling from an unknown number. If she didn't hurry up and answer, he would hang up. She cleared her throat and tried once again to speak.

"Hey," she managed, though it came out as a whisper and slightly choked, ending on a slight squeak.

There was silence on Peter's end for a few moments.

"'Liv? Is that you? The *real* you? Where are you?" he asked in rapid succession, not even giving her a chance to answer a question before the next followed it. He suddenly sounded very much awake.

"Yes, it's me. I'm near the opera house. Can you meet me there? Alone?"

"I'll be there as quickly as I can. Hold tight."

Olivia hung up the phone and gave it to the waitress, muttering a small "Thank you" as she walked out of the building and back towards the opera house. She thought of waiting outside on the benches, but after sitting there a few minutes was struck with the memory of when the flash grenade had exploded in the street. She shivered in the cool, early autumn air and walked into the entry way of the opera house to wait. Outside was full of too many bad memories.

Despite how exhausted she was, Olivia was surprised to find that she wasn't any worse off. She had been running full speed for almost 36 hours and she hadn't eaten in over 16. If Peter or Astrid could see her at that moment, she knew they would be having a fit. Olivia smiled to herself in the dark, surprised to find that one of the facets that she had missed the most and that she had focused on when trying to get back was the simple protectiveness those two had of her. She focused on all the 'opposite' details she could conjure: the con man, the insane one, the genius, the male. She had simply thought of every character trait for those nearest and dear to her that she could remember and thew them out, feeling the Doctor's presence in her head in a way that she couldn't explain. A part of her wished that she could say that it had felt strange, but after having had John Scott and Nick Lane in residency before, the Doctor was almost unnoticeable in comparison. He, at least, respected her privacy and merely did the task he had assigned himself and threw out into the Void of time and space all the data that Olivia had catalogued about her friends. It had taken surprisingly little effort to travel after that; her universe had called back to her and embraced her in a way almost as familiar as her sister's hug or Peter's caress.

After Olivia catalogued her injuries, she made a mental to-do list to prepare herself for the coming few days of debriefing. As such, she spent some time going over what to tell the others. Peter had obviously figured out about the alternate Olivia. Whether he had shared that information or was pretending to believe her alternate self, Olivia didn't know. Olivia mentally kicked herself. She should have known that Peter had figured it out-Walter had told her as much when he said that 'The Doomsday Device' had started working. Peter would not have been trying to find a way back to his original universe if he did not know that the real Olivia was, in fact, still there. At least she wouldn't have to fill Peter in on that part of the situation. The rest she did not relish telling him, and she decided that certain aspects-the torture and the 'interrogations'-were things that she would keep between herself and Broyles. He already knew his father was trouble for her universe, but he did not need to know just how insane the man had become.

Two hours after she called him, she heard the Bishop station wagon pull up in front of the building. Olivia slowly pulled herself to her feet from the position she had assumed of sitting on the floor against the doors that led into the main theatre. As Peter opened the door into the building, light illuminated his figure from the lampposts outside and Olivia was reminded of the strange glimmer his skin had assumed when Walter had dosed her with Cortexiphan all those months before. She shook her head to clear it of the memory and stepped forward out of the dark shadows. Peter saw her and came forward to meet her, his hands reaching up to either embrace her or caress her face (Olivia wasn't sure which), but she held up her hands to stop him.

It was not that she did not want his comfort. In point of fact, in the early days of her captivity, she had often comforted herself with different variations of how this reunion could go. In some, they were in his world and he was rescuing her. In others, they had returned to her world and the reunion went one of two ways. There was the girley, romantic one she sometimes indulged in that included over-the-top declarations and vows of vengeance on Walter, and then there was the more reserved one in which they merely nodded at each other and went out to save the world without taking any notice of what had occurred.

She had dreamt of his comfort for months. Craved it, desired it, and needed it. That was the problem. If he started to comfort her, she would let him, and she would never be able to say what she needed to say. Because of that, the reunion did not go at all like how she imagined it. It wasn't boisterous or kickass; it wasn't even awkward. It was simply quiet. She held up a hand to stop his touching her and he complied, seeming to understand her implicitly, just as he always had. She said nothing for a few moments, taking in everything about him that she felt had dimmed in her mind over time-his exact height, the curves of his fingers, the look of the wool jumpers he always wore, the way his eyes seem to be both blue and green at the same time. While she allowed her eyes to take him in, she noted that he seemed focused on cataloguing her as well. She had no doubt that he was mentally noting each new bruise, cut, scar, and discolouration that marred her skin and was blaming himself (at least in part) for each one.

"We're not safe," Olivia said after some time had passed. Peter raised his eyes from where they had been cataloguing bruises along her knuckles back to her face, saying nothing but clenching his jaw in worry. "I made some...friends," Olivia continued, trying to tell Peter the important details without having to go into a drawn out story about the Doctor and Rose Tyler. She had a feeling that she would still be telling the story when the Sun rose if she tried to throw in their part of events as well. "Walter tried to use their expertise to fix the machine. But they rigged it so that it would backfire. Peter, the machine is gone for now but I know Walter-both this version and your real father-and he's going to rebuild it. He's going to try again and I don't know how but he's going to find some way to try and coerce you to come back, and however he does it, he'll be ruthless. We need to get the others and warn them. He could come and take any one of us to try and convince you and-"

"Olivia," Peter finally said, holding his hands up and gesturing towards her, as though he wanted to place a comforting hand on her shoulders. Which, Olivia reminded herself, he probably did. "It's going to be okay. We're going to warn them. I promise."

Olivia took a deep breath to calm herself. Now that she had told him that the war wasn't over, she suddenly felt as though she was ready to drop to the ground.

"Can I go home then? Or is the other me still...?"

"No, we discovered that it wasn't you about three months ago. She's been in protective custody since then. So far, she hasn't told us much, but I think that's more because my father wasn't big on being honest with the people who worked for him." Peter said this with little emotion, as though his father was nothing to him. Olivia knew better, and felt her heart break for him all over again. It seemed that Peter always just found his father before losing him again, and this particular time was her own fault.

Without thinking and without preamble, Olivia embraced him. Peter quickly returned it, though he held her lightly as he was trying to be mindful of her injuries. When Olivia had watched the Doctor and Rose hug, she had been awed by the strength of it-how the Doctor hugged her with his whole being; the hugs between the Doctor and his former companion had been joyful and giddy. Olivia had briefly wondered if a real hug from Peter would be like that. She should have known that it wouldn't be. It was better, at least as far as Olivia Dunham was concerned. It wasn't boisterous and joyful; it was quiet and comforting. Peter didn't hug Olivia until she squeaked, and she didn't feel the urge to giggle into his shoulder. Rather, it was a couple of strong, steady arms encircling her, warm hands spanning her back, wooley jumper with cologne scent against her cheek, and 2 day stubble against her forehead. It was even better than a Doctor and Rose hug because it was theirs-their own brand of welcome and homeliness.

Olivia found herself struggling to find the right words to say as he held her. The last time they had spoken, she had told him that he belonged with her, and she could not think of what to say after four and a half months of separation that would convey that she still felt the same. She threw words around in her mind-thoughts she'd had while imprisoned that both made sense and didn't at the same time. There were things she wanted to share with him that were impossible to form into words and she got insanely frustrated with herself for her lack of vocabulary. Finally, she said the most honest thing she could at the moment, and they felt like the most perfect as soon as they were out of her mouth. "I missed you."

She tightened her grip around his neck a little harder as she said the words, and she felt rather than heard his small exhale as he buried his face against her shoulder. He said nothing for the longest time, merely tightened his hold on her waist an infinitesimal amount, his fingers digging into the cotton of her white incarceration uniform. "I missed you, too," he finally muttered, drawing back from her but maintaining contact by stroking her cheek with his thumb. Olivia felt her heart stutter in her chest, and her knees actually went weak. While she knew Peter would probably joke that it was his effect on her, both she and he knew that in reality her body needed rest and was about to give out.

"Let's get you home," Peter said, moving one arm around her waist to help support her weight. It was a sign of how tired Olivia was that she leaned into him without complaint.

"So I can go home now, right? You'll call Rachel in the car and let her know I'm okay?"

"Of course, 'Liv. I knew you wouldn't want her to worry, so I told her that you were on a mission out of the country for an indefinite period of time. I figured that would buy me a couple of months to try to figure out how to get you back. Walter and I made some leeway with trying to reverse engineer the plug he made when he took me, but the rifts weren't staying open for more than two or three seconds at a time. But I *was* coming for you, Liv," Peter stressed, walking them slowly towards the door, Olivia slumping more and more as they went. Olivia paid close attention to his words, both to get her cover story to give her sister and also because she sensed it was important to Peter that she know he was trying to find her. If Olivia had the strength, she would have smiled at his worry. It wasn't as though she had any doubts that he cared enough to try to find her if he knew she was gone; she had merely hoped he would be smart enough not to do.

Olivia held on to him as he opened the car door and helped her settle in her seat. He fastened her seat belt for her (which, if she had been more conscious, she would have snapped at him for-she wasn't a complete invalid after all), and closed her door. When he was settled behind the wheel in the driver's seat, she turned her head to him and with her eyes half closed she said, "It's good to see you again, Peter Bishop."

Peter turned his head to her, a small smirk coming across his face at her re-enactment of his greeting from the year before. "It's good to see you, too." He turned the key in the ignition and put his hand on the gear shift. "Let's go home."

Olivia summoned the last of her strength and placed her hand on top of his. She had no doubt that when they got back to Boston and she had slept for a few hours at home, that Peter would insist that she go to the hospital for an examination, but she would deal with that argument later. For now, she would enjoy being back in his familiar, comforting company and she would merely enjoy the ride home. Olivia felt her eyes close completely and rested her head against the window. She gave the hand that was caressing Peter's a small squeeze. The last word she uttered before she fell asleep made Peter quirk his eyebrow in the dark: "Allons-y."


End file.
